Gunn Report 2008

Fallon London’s Gorilla spot for Cadbury’s was the most awarded commercial in the world in 2008 according to the Gunn Report
All the winners from this year’s advertising awards ceremonies have been counted and verified, and the results of this year’s Gunn Report are in.

Fallon London’s Gorilla spot for Cadbury’s was the most awarded commercial in the world in 2008 according to the Gunn Report

All the winners from this year’s advertising awards ceremonies have been counted and verified, and the results of this year’s Gunn Report are in.

The Gunn Report, which tallies the results from the most significant advertising awards from around the world (and there are many, believe us) to compile a list of the most awarded adverts and thus the most garlanded agencies of the year, is now ten years old. That ten years has seen huge change in the industry, as Rémi Babinet, founder and chairman of BETC Euro RSCG and this year’s Gunn Report guest editor, remarks in his introduction to the report.

“Not much more than ten years ago, in agencies, art directors stuck their typography onto transparencies and cut their layouts on a guillotine. We could hear the distant hiss of glue spray, we smoked in meetings and we listened to CD Walkmans while waiting for the year 2000. In barely ten years, the world has dematerialised, technology has transformed our activities, media has exploded, categories have moved. The world in which an ad agency exists today had not anticipated that the telephone of the future would be a computer and that the camera of the future would be a telephone. What an incredible time, what an incredible journey.”

Projector’s Uniqlock campaign was the most awarded interactive campaign in the world 2008: here a dancer auditions for one of the the videos

But what does ten years mean in terms of the Gunn Report? Well firstly, that the most interesting listings on it are now in the digital/interactive arena. Here we find that Japanese boutique agency Projector takes the Most Awarded Interactive spot, for its innovative Uniqlock project in which bloggers could upload a clock to use on their sites featuring dancers marking each hour. Second comes Goodby, Silverstein & Partners with Get The Glass for the California Milk Got Milk? campaign, while BBDO New York & Big Spaceship took the bronze spot for HBO Voyeur.

HBO Voyeur, by BBDO New York/Big Spaceship, was the third most awarded interactive ad and fourth in the All Gunns Blazing list

The UK is noticeably absent from the list of interactive winners, and in fact, while it was the second most awarded country in the world overall (with the US coming out top), no UK agencies were featured on the most awarded interactive agency list. Here Crispin Porter & Bogusky came top, with Farfar Stockholm second and Goodby, Silverstein & Partners third.

Fallon London’s Sony Play-Doh ad was joint third in the most awarded commercials list

Britain returns to the fray mostly in the TV commercials arena, where Fallon London has three spots in the top five. Cadbury’s Gorilla was the most awarded spot of the year by a distance, while Skoda Cake and Sony Play-Doh come in at equal third. The other winners in this section were Power of Wind for Epuron Wind Energy by Nordpol+ (second) and Leo Burnett Kuala Lumpur’s Tan Hong Ming ad for Petronas Merdeka and Saatchi & Saatchi New York’s Interview ad for Tide coming equal fifth.

A new category was introduced this year – the awkwardly titled All Gunns Blazing section – which aims to capture “the new vivacity of agencies, and their incredible capacity for adaptation and orchestration”, and contains the kind of integrated, cross-disciplinary work that features in the Titanium Award at Cannes. Winning this section was the WWF Earth Hour campaign from Leo Burnett Sydney, with the epic Microsoft Xbox Halo 3 Believe campaign coming second and CP&B’s Burger King Whopper Freakout third. HBO Voyeur and Uniqlock round out this list.

Saatchi & Saatchi New York’s print ad for Tide took the top print prize in the report

As further evidence of how things have changed, print awards – once on a par with TV for covetability – now seem distinctly less exciting, with the exception this year of Saatchi & Saatchi New York’s rather fine print ad for Tide Ultra, which won more awards this year than any other. Lowe Bangkok and Ogilvy & Mather Bangkok came joint second with Ogama Ventilating Fan and WWF respectively.

Other significant wins went to MJZ, as most awarded production company; Sony as most awarded advertiser, Thanonchai Sornsrivichai as most awarded director; and BBDO New York as most awarded agency, with Fallon London coming in second in this section. The most awarded agency network was also BBDO.

The Halo 3 Believe campaign came second in the All Gunns Blazing list

While for some the Gunn Report may represent yet more navel-gazing by adland, it remains an accurate barometer of the state of the industry. The most interesting campaigns of the year internationally all appear in its lists, so as a quick reference of the things you should know about in advertising 2008, the Gunn Report is it. And the agencies that appear at the top of these lists do tend to reflect the industry’s leading players. If a similar exercise were carried out with the year’s graphic design awards, the results may not be similarly comprehensive or valid. In other words, in advertising the case for entering awards is still clear-cut and (almost) universally accepted.

This year’s Gunn Report also reflects a changing advertising industry, but, as Babinet reflects in his introduction, most in the industry will attest that “the art of having simple ideas, brilliantly executed still remains the lethal weapon”.

Around this time of year CR is inundated with promotional calendars and the occasional diary as gifts. Most of them, to be honest, end up being filed under R (for Recycling) as it would seem that making a genuinely covetable calendar, that’s both practical and good looking, isn’t easy. So it was with some considerable delight that we found ourselves positively cooing over a year planner this morning here at CR towers…

A big thank you to everyone who came down to the launch of our Photography Annual exhibition at the Print Space gallery in London last week. Photographer William Pine made a nice little film of the event (above) and TPS has also sent us a few pics from the night. Best In Book photography from the Annual will be in the gallery until November 19.